Living two lives behind a secret | Teen Ink

Living two lives behind a secret

March 19, 2013
By Anonymous

Ever have to live two lives in order to prevent your family any harm? Well I have . I tried so hard for so long to fight this feeling . To fight against my thoughts but I couldn’t handle it anymore. All the thoughts running through my mind while I was in bed wouldn’t let me sleep. I’ll ask myself questions –Plenty of them .Why I had to be this way? How am I going to come out to my mom? How is she going to react? Is this a bad thing? This isn’t normal for my family. Why do I have to be the one to put them in such a position? Are they going to accept me? Forgive me for causing them this embarrassment. As I begun to change my physical appearance I begun to see the rejection coming from my mom. I was afraid to tell her because she is such an old fashion person . She would be so humiliated if her brothers and sister knew and would wonder what they would think of me. This lead me to believe that I was unaccepted at home, so that’s when I started to come home late. I constantly made up excuses as to my late arrivals, but soon after I couldn’t think of another lie. Curiosity rose within my mother, and problems occurred. The pressure was getting more and more heavy. I kept thinking to myself ‘is this the time to tell her?’ I was sick and tired of living two separate lives. Why can’t I accept myself for who I am? In reality, there was nothing wrong with being who I am. That’s when I came to the realization that it was time to tell my mother, but I needed help. I asked my sister if she was willing to help; she was. We slowly approached our mother’s room. My sister went in first and started to talk to her, since she is the only one that is capable of calming our mother down. Then it was my time to speak, and that’s when I told her. My mom automatically breaks into tears and begins to holler. This was not the reaction I expected. I expected her to throw me out the house, but she didn’t. She just started to ask questions. She wanted to know what has she done wrong for this to happen. Or if she was a bad mother, but none of this was true. I told her she has been the best mother anyone can ask for. She has done everything for me and has given me everything and anything I needed. I also told her that I don’t understand why I’m like this, but it has been killing me for years. I didn’t want to cause her any pain, but in the long run I was actually hurting myself because I wasn’t comfortable with the person I was pretending to be. It took some time for my mom to process it but she ended up understanding me. She made it clear that no matter what happens, she will always be here for me. She assured me that she wasn’t going anywhere. Her only concern was that people are going to mistreat me because of the way I am. But it doesn’t matter because both her and my sister are my support system and in the end they will always be by my side. Having my mother’s support really meant the world to me because she is the most important person in my life. After knowing I had her support, I started to think clearly and was able to sleep at night. I no longer had to live two different lives because of my secret. I’m living one life and it’s the one I want to live.


The author's comments:
This piece is talking about the struggle my sister went through to come out to my mother about being gay .

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